[bane]

A lot of people rag on Dragon's Lair (and similar) for being "just a pretty movie with occasional interaction" instead of a game. But modern games are full of Quick Time Events (QTE)s which are spiritually the exact same thing.

(I still have the announcer's voice calling out "DRAGON'S LAIR!" in the attract mode seared in my memory).

> We were staying in a hotel or motel, and it was either attached to or had a small arcade of its own.

For people who didn't grow up during the 80s arcade boom. Arcades where everywhere. It was basically expected that every place that sold anything would have at least 1 arcade game. Grocery store? Check. Tanning Salon? Sure thing. Strip mall? Why, they'll have 2 complete deluxe arcades.

It was a looooong time from the death of Arcades to modern smart phones before we had something to do while hanging around most stores again.

The gathering crowd around an awesome play of a game really did happen back then. It's like the scene from Tron where Flynn is playing in his arcade. It was actually like that.

My older brother could play epic multi-hour long games of some kind of game I can't remember the name to (I think it was Pengo), racking up so many extra men that he could go for a bathroom break mid-game and let some scruffy novice kid (usually me) break in and play at the advanced levels for a couple minutes. The convenience store he played in would be packed with 20 or 30 people watching history happen. It gave every small town a local hero they could cheer for and every local hero felt like a minor god for the length of their quarter.

[KVFinn]

>A lot of people rag on Dragon's Lair (and similar) for being "just a pretty movie with occasional interaction" instead of a game. But modern games are full of Quick Time Events (QTE)s which are spiritually the exact same thing.

Well modern games are routinely criticized for any QTEs, even when used sparingly...

[rodgerd]

> But modern games are full of Quick Time Events (QTE)s which are spiritually the exact same thing.

And it's a terrible, terrible thing.

[partomniscient]

Unless you turn them up to 11, and end up with Street Fighter and similar games, where it mixes twitch reactions with tactical strategy and rote memorisation no longer helps if you go into P vs P instead of P vs Game AI.

That being said, my possibly flawed memory of those fighting games spiritual predecessor was a karate game which had 2 joysticks and no buttons for a single player to use.

[lectrick]

> 2 joysticks

You must be talking about Karate Champ. STILL a fun game when played against someone else!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karate_Champ

[partomniscient]

That's it. Hazy memory is hazy.... I think I played it a bit and came to the conclusion that it was too expensive for me to learn. Most of my pitiful allowance went into things like Ghosts 'n Goblins or vertical scrolling shoot-em-ups. To get back on topic: Dragon's Lair value for money was even more abysmal locally for me - {hazy, contrived memory warning} - I put the money in and before I died, moved the joystick 28 times and hit the buttons 8 times, but I lasted 3 minutes.

That's roughly equivalent to a few seconds of player input for 1942 or Galaga. Pretty, but not particularly fulfilling.

For the young and poor, Dragon's Lair was indeed a great game to watch other people play.

[omilu]

damn its weird having to explain the arcade experience of the 80s to the newer generation. where did the time go?

[Keyframe]

I don't know about you guys, but I want arcades back in full swing. Not only for nostalgic reasons, but because it was damn great. It also forced people to hang out together and forge friendships. I wonder if time is ripe for it to come back or if it will ever be?

[ekianjo]

> But modern games are full of Quick Time Events (QTE)s which are spiritually the exact same thing.

Exactly. I usually call all of these recent games "Dragon's Lair ripoffs" especially the games from Quantic Dreams where it's just one QTE after another.

[KVFinn]

>I usually call all of these recent games "Dragon's Lair ripoffs" especially the games from Quantic Dreams where it's just one QTE after another.

While I'm not really a fan myself I don't think these belong in the same category.

Dragon's Lair is pass or fail, you move forward or you keep repeating the segment until you succeed.

A game like Heavy Rain uses QTEs a narrative device to give different players different narratives. If you 'fail' the story becomes a different story, one where you failed at that particular event. You aren't expected to keep repeating Heavy Rain until you 'master' every QTE, you are expected to play through it once and have a somewhat unique experience that isn't the same as other players.

[ekianjo]

I know what you are saying, but in terms of gameplay it's very much the same mechanics involved. And it's not THAT interesting to play if you remove the story attached to it - there's not much search involved, it's all about the pretty graphics and the story.

[krrrh]

You'll probably enjoy this Jon Raffman film which reflects on what it meant to be such a local hero or minor god.

http://youtu.be/4WPZbwDHz-0